Why isn't every economist an Austrian?

[ianlippert]

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A scientist may be unlikely to take the position that God exists. Yet he would not take the position that God does not exist to be absolutely certain.


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Guys, take it to SMP

[John Kilduff]

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I'll show you in a more practical way where the problem lies:


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There are eyewitness accounts, reported in the Bible, of various miracles performed by Jesus.

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* There is no such thing as THE bible. There are books that are called 'bible', but there are thousands of different versions. These books are stories in the form of allegories (mythological symbols, etc).
* The word 'miracle' means absolutely nothing. You're speaking in tongues here and I can only assume that you're trying to mess with my head.
* Jesus is a mythological character. Why would you possibly treat these stories as historical fact? Is there any reason to do so? It's completely full of mythological symbols. It does NOT try to describe and understand reality. To try to describe and understand reality you need scientific theories , concepts, logic, consistency. But NOTHING of the sort happens.


To conclude: you are trying to [censored] with my head. What you're doing has nothing to do with knowledge discovery.

People have done the same with you in the past, in order for you to act like this. But you now have a choice. Either you start communicating in a logical fashion: explaining things in an understandable fashion. Or you keep on talking to people as if you're trying to understand reality but in fact you're trying to obscure it.

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I assure you, I'm being logical (at least in my view), and I'm not trying to mess with your head. I also believe that Jesus was a historic personage, and not merely a myth. But as another poster said, maybe we should be discussing this in SMP rather than here. I'm not sure how we gravitated so far away from the main thrust of this thread and I'm not going to look back to find out, but apologies to all for any derailment if it occurred.

[AlexM]

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Why is it that ACist always come off as arrogant and cold-hearted?


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That's the way I always feel about liberalism. :P

[Skidoo]

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Why is it that ACist always come off as arrogant and cold-hearted?


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That's the way I always feel about liberalism. :P

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Both (social) liberalism and AC (market liberalism) come across alike. That shouldn't be a surprise, because neither system recognizes in practice the inalienable rights of the individual. One puts the collective first, while the other leads the cheer for the power of money. In an important way, the tyrannies of "one person, one vote" and "one dollar, one vote" are essentially similar.

[hmkpoker]

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Why is it that ACist always come off as arrogant and cold-hearted?

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Human beings really aren't calibrated to fathom the macroeconomic social world (national/global markets, 9-10 figure population sizes) as they are with the microeconomic social world (cliques, families, offices, 2-3 figure population sizes). The rules that govern macroeconomics are very different from the rules that govern microeconomics, so trying to comprehend global economies in terms of the basic "I'll scratch your back if you scratch mine" rules that we use in our every day lives doesn't work very well. It's like trying to comprehend galaxy cluster behavior with classical physics (which is basically how we think) rather than general relativity. It just doesn't work.

As far as we know, death is the worst thing that can happen to us, and we go to great lengths to avoid it and preserve life. Yet on a macroeconomic level, deaths matter much, much less. When you die, how many people in the global economy do you think will care, or would be willing to exchange a sum of personal property/money to save your life? The answer is very, very few. Individual human lives are much more like units rather than wholes on this unthinkably large social level.

It sounds cruel and inhuman to think this way, but that's because we're dealing with concepts that can't be understood intuitively; they must be understood theoretically and scientifically. No scientist can truly comprehend the size of a galaxy, and no human being can truly comprehend a global economy.

While it does sound very arrogant and cold-hearted, the facts of the matter are as follows: humans do follow incentives. They do prefer more goods to less. They will not provide altruistically for the greater good without a gun to their heads. Individuals that consume more than they can produce are a drain on society's resources, and a system that selects against such individuals must lead to surplusses and prosperity.

[pvn]

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Why is it that ACist always come off as arrogant and cold-hearted?


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That's the way I always feel about liberalism. :P

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Both (social) liberalism and AC (market liberalism) come across alike. That shouldn't be a surprise, because neither system recognizes in practice the inalienable rights of the individual. One puts the collective first, while the other leads the cheer for the power of money.

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Of course, this is false. One recognizes the inalienable rights of the individual, and the other doesn't.

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In an important way, the tyrannies of "one person, one vote" and "one dollar, one vote" are essentially similar.

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If you repeat it enough times, it becomes true!

[RR]

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The problem is that universities are filled with professors that know very little about modern economics, but have no problem writing about the great depression or karl marx. I think this goes a long way to confusing the average person who relies on academics to form their understanding of the world.


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I took an lot of econ and did not find this to be the case. Maybe it was just the two universities I attended. Of course one of my favorite prof (and the most respected in my undergrad department) is an Austrian.

[Nielsio]

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The problem is that universities are filled with professors that know very little about modern economics, but have no problem writing about the great depression or karl marx. I think this goes a long way to confusing the average person who relies on academics to form their understanding of the world.


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I took an lot of econ and did not find this to be the case. Maybe it was just the two universities I attended. Of course one of my favorite prof (and the most respected in my undergrad department) is an Austrian.

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Who is he?

[RR]

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The problem is that universities are filled with professors that know very little about modern economics, but have no problem writing about the great depression or karl marx. I think this goes a long way to confusing the average person who relies on academics to form their understanding of the world.


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I took an lot of econ and did not find this to be the case. Maybe it was just the two universities I attended. Of course one of my favorite prof (and the most respected in my undergrad department) is an Austrian.

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Who is he?

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Richard Vedder. I don't know know how much of an Austrian he is, but he is an interview with him.

http://www.mises.org/journals/aen/aen19_1_1.asp

[ianlippert]

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I took an lot of econ and did not find this to be the case. Maybe it was just the two universities I attended. Of course one of my favorite prof (and the most respected in my undergrad department) is an Austrian.


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I was referring to professors outside of the economics department. I mean my econ deptartment still teaches Keynsianism, but for the most part they promote free trade and free markets. Once you step out into the rest of the humanities you get a whole bunch of crazy economic theories.